Drilling equipment for the energy industry is being developed and optimized for increased automation and autonomy. Pipe handling systems are especially challenging because of the rough handling of pipes. Because of rough conditions and handling it is difficult or close to impossible to instrument the pipes, which again makes it a challenging task to automate pipe handling. Several equipment developers and manufacturers have automated large parts of pipe handling for drilling equipment, but there are still operations that need manual intervention. Several equipment manufacturers and companies have tried to solve the above mentioned problems without success. The present invention is related to automation of such manual interventions that will work in challenging environments such as bright sunlight, complete darkness, artificial lightning and large physical vibrations.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,114,235 define a method and apparatus for making and breaking tubular connections. The pipe joining system includes a movable support frame for supporting and integrating on a rig floor the tools associated with making and braking the connection between two tubulars.
Common to most available advanced systems is that they present solutions related the mechanics related to making and braking the tubular joints, and not to automated location of either the tubular joint or the single stick-up height of a tubular part sticking up from a mouse-hole, rotary table or well center on a drill floor. Until now the identification of a tubular in a mouse-hole or a rotary table has been relying on human detection and activation of the tools associated with making and breaking the connections between two tubulars.
The challenges with current state of the art methods and technologies are the required level of involvement of human operators. In rough conditions this becomes more apparent, and may also represent a security risk. Also if the operation of identifying and recognizing the tubulars in a drilling operation fails it may cause considerable delays and lead to lost production-time.
There is a need for an improved system to provide automatic identification of tubular joints and of stickup-height of tubular in a mouse-hole, rotary table or well center, or even identification whether there are a tubular in the mouse-hole, rotary table or well center or not. The present invention fills these needs.